Ruled Britannia

XI

When Lope De Vega visited the Theatre with Lucy Watkins, he didn't take her back to the tiring room after the performance. Will Kemp or another would-be wit was too likely to ask him why he hadn't brought his Spanish lady instead. He didn't want Lucy finding out about Catalina Ibanez. Bad things happened when one of his ladies learned of another: so he'd painfully discovered.

But here, it seemed, he was bound to have trouble. He and Lucy had just left the Theatre on their way back into London when she said, "Is it true you killed a man?"

Unease prickled through de Vega. He tried his best to misunderstand her, saying, "My love, I am a soldier. This chances in the soldier's trade."

She shook her head. "No. Of late. A Spanish gentleman, they say."

"A nobleman, but by my troth no gentleman," he said. Then he stopped and sighed. He'd told her what she needed to know, or most of it.

And she'd already heard, or heard of, the rest, too. "They say you fought him over a lady."

As he'd called Don Alejandro de Recalde no gentleman, so he wanted to call Catalina IbaA±ez no lady.

But that wouldn't help. He sighed again. "Yes, that is so."

Lucy nodded. "I was fain to hear it from your lips first. I owed you so much, before saying farewell."

"Say no such thing!" Lope exclaimed. "I love thee!"

"And the other lady?"

"And her," Lope agreed.

"You may not love more than one," Lucy said sadly.

"Wherefore may I not?" he asked. "I have had this stricture laid against me ere now, but never have I grasped it."

"That I credit. But if you love two"-she'd stopped using thou, a bad sign-"then two will love you, each to herself wanting all you have to give, as she hath given all she hath. Can you in equal measure return the love of two? Give me leave to doubt. Loving more than one, you love not wisely, but too well."

"How can one love too well? A fond notion, a notion not possible."

"Love two women at but a single time-say you love two women at but a single time-and you love too well," Lucy insisted.

"Do but let me show thee thou art mistook, that-" Lope began.

"How? Wouldst thou put us twain, this Spanish hussy and me, in but a single bed?" Now Lucy used thou again, but in insult, not intimacy. "Whether she'd go or no, I would not, nor I will not. Where I shall go is far from thee, now and forever." Her voice held tears. "So we loved, as love in twain had the essence but in one. We were two distincts, division none: number there in love was slain. So between us love did shine, that one lover saw her right flaming in her lover's sigh. Either was the other's mine. But for us, lovers, now sigh a prayer." She walked away.

Love, to Lope, was like a child that longed for everything it could come by. Telling that to Lucy seemed unlikely to change her mind. "We that are true lovers run into strange capers," he called after her. "Alas that love, gentle in his view, should be tyrannous and rough in proof."

"In proof? Thou canst give no proof of love, not loving another besides myself." Lucy kept walking. A few paces farther on, she stooped, picked up a stone, and flung it at Lope with unladylike dexterity. If he hadn't ducked, it would have hit him in the face. She bent down for another stone.

"Fie! Give over!" Lope exclaimed. "I'll trouble thee-you-no more."

Lucy let the stone fall. "Would thou'dst never asked my name. Would thou'dst never spoke me fair.

Would thou'dst never found thy Spanish popsy fair, for thou canst not have her and me together. Mary, pity women!" She rounded a corner and was gone.

"Fret not, friend," said an Englishman who'd listened with amusement to the quarrel. "Women are like fish: another'll come along soon enough, to nibble the end o' your pole." He laughed.

So did Lope, when he got the joke a moment later. He didn't go after Lucy; that, plainly, was a lost cause. Instead, he trudged back towards Bishopsgate. He still had Catalina IbaA±ez's fiery affections, but he found he didn't want them right now. He wanted Lucy, whom he'd just lost. Had he lost Catalina and kept Lucy, he had no doubt he would have pined for the Spanish woman's caresses instead. I know what I am, by God, he thought. What to do about it? That's a different question.

The Irish soldiers at the gate recognized Lope for a Spaniard. They swept off their hats and bowed to him as he went by. He nodded in return. Once inside Bishopsgate, he slowed down and looked around.

If he was lucky.

And he was. Cicely Sellis came out of a ribbonmaker's shop, a couple of yards of green ribbon wrapped around the left sleeve of the mannish doublet she wore, her cat following at her heel like a dog. Lope made a leg. "Mistress Sellis. So good to see you. Give you good day."

She curtsied as if he were a duke, not a junior officer. "And good day to you, Master Lope. How wags your world?"

"I have known it better," he replied.

"Why, surely those set over you have agreed you fought Don Alejandro only for to save your own life,"

she said. "How could it be otherwise, with Mistress IbaA±ez telling a tale like unto yours?"

"The difficulty lies elsewhere," de Vega said, before blinking and wondering how she knew of that. He started to ask, but found he lacked the nerve. He started to cross himself, but found he also lacked the nerve for that. Bruja, he thought, and shivered in the warm-for England, at any rate-July sun.

"Where?" Cicely Sellis asked. She didn't let him answer, but showed more of what might have been witchery by softly singing,

"On a day, alack the day!

Love, whose month is ever May,

Spied a blossom passing fair

Playing in the wanton air:

Through the velvet leaves the wind,

All unseen, can passage find;

That the lover, sick to death,

Wished himself the heaven's breath.

Air, quoth he, thy cheeks may blow;

Air, would I might triumph so!

But alack! my hand is sworn

Ne'er to pluck from thee thy thorn;

Vow, alack! for youth unmeet,

Youth so apt to pick a sweet.

Do not call it sin in me,

That I am forsworn for thee;

Thou for whom e'en Jove would swear

Juno but an Ethiop were;

And deny himself for Jove,

Turning mortal for thy love."

This time, Lope did cross himself, and violently. "How knew you of my affections?" he demanded, his voice harsh. "Tell it me this instant, else others holier than I shall ask it of you."

Her cat bristled at him, but she remained smiling, unconcerned. "This needs not the cunning woman's arts, Master Lope. You came towards me all cast down. When late you fought Don Alejandro, you kept company with his mistress, but is it not so you had also another sweetheart? An I mistake me not, she hath given you her farewell."

Bruja, Lope thought again. But maybe not. What she said made good logical sense-as much as anything to do with women ever made good logical sense. Slowly, grudgingly, he said, "You are a cunning woman indeed."

Cicely Sellis curtsied again. "For the which I thank you. And you have my sympathy-the which, like all such, is worth its weight in gold-for her who was too blind to see your true worth."

He stared at her, open-mouthed. It wasn't for her looks, though she was fair enough, and would have been lovely at eighteen. But he had never known a woman who used words as a bravo used a rapier-and was as deadly with them as any bravo ever born. "Before God," he breathed, hardly knowing he spoke aloud, "I must know thee better."

"And will you turn your back on Mistress IbaA±ez, cleaving only to me?" she asked.

With any other woman, he would have babbled promises, knowing they were lies. With Cicely Sellis, that seemed less than wise. What would she do if she caught him out? What could she do? Do you really want to find out? Lope asked himself, and knew he didn't. He sighed and shook his head. "Nay, I doubt I shall," he answered. His smile was crooked. "I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is a young man, and no honester than I."

The cunning woman smiled, too. "Every man hath his fault, and honesty is yours?" she suggested.

Yes, she had a dangerous tongue. And if it was dangerous in one sense, what might it do in another?

Lope made himself stop his lewd imaginings while he tried to figure out how to reply to that. At last, he said, "Doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love."

"What? Me?" Now Cicely Sellis paused. After a moment, she wagged a finger at him. "Nay, you said that not. You are clever, sir-haply, too clever by half."

"I could love thee. I would love thee," de Vega said.

"But not me alone," she said. It wasn't a question. She waited to see if Lope would deny it. When he didn't, she smiled once more and shook her head. "I'd not give all of my love for the part of another's-would not nor will not. Gladly would I be your friend, and as gladly be no more."

"Shall I beg thee?" Lope made as if to go to one knee in the muddy street. Laughing, Cicely Sellis gestured that he should stay on his feet. "Shall I serenade thee?" He strummed an imaginary lute and began to sing in Spanish.

"Give over!" she said with another laugh. "Shall the tiger change his stripes? I think not. Were I myself a different jade, I'd say, come, woo me, woo me, for I am in a holiday humor, and like enough to consent.

But, being all of mine own, I'll not be but part of someone else's liking."

She sounded annoyingly like Lucy Watkins. "I am your friend, then," Lope said, knowing he'd get no more this day. "Those you make friends, and give your heart to, keep their friendship under their own life's key."

"Betimes," the cunning woman said. "Betimes, but not so oft as we'd fain have't." She offered up what at first sounded like a prayer:

"Grant I may never prove so fond,

To trust man on his oath or bond;

Or a keeper with my freedom,

Or my friends, if I should need 'em. Amen."

" Aii! " he said, wincing. Few men saw the world so sardonically, and even fewer women.

"I must away." Cicely Sellis scooped up her cat-Mommet, that was the beast's name-and set it on her shoulder, where it had perched when Lope first met her. As she started up Bishopsgate-towards the gate itself, the direction opposite to his-she added, "God give you good. friends."

"And you, lady," he called after her. "And you." He wanted to turn around and follow her. Only the certainty that that, right now, would cost him even her tenuous friendship kept him walking on into London, his feet dragging reluctantly through the dirt at every step.

William Shakespeare watched from the side of the stage as Lieutenant de Vega, as Juan de Idiaquez, declaimed what amounted to his epitaph for Philip II:

" Fair Spain ne'er had a king until his time.

Virtue he had, deserving to command:

His brandish'd sword did blind men with his beams;

His arms spread wider than a dragon's wings;

His sparkling eyes, replete with wrathful fire,

More dazzled and drove back his enemies

Than mid-day sun bent against their faces.

What should I say? his deeds exceed all speech:

He ne'er lift up his hand but conquered.' "

To Shakespeare's astonishment, the Spaniard, after delivering his lines, covered his face with his hands and wept. "Here, what's toward?" Shakespeare called, hurrying towards him.

Lope de Vega looked up at him, tears streaming unashamed from his eyes. "The beauty of your words hath pierced me to the heart," he answered. "Their beauty, ay, and their truth. For truly great Philip dies, and much dies with him. Spain shall be fatherless henceforth."

"Truly, Spain shall be fatherless henceforth," Shakespeare murmured, turning the line to the iambic pentameter of blank verse. He said it over again, then nodded. "Gramercy, Lieutenant. I shall append that to the end of your speech." He made a leg at Lope. "And I congratulate you: your first line in English."

Actually, de Vega had made only four feet of the line, but Shakespeare wasn't inclined to quibble there.

Several of the players clapped their hands. Lope grinned and bowed. But Matthew Quinn, who played a Roman soldier named Decius in Boudicca, told Shakespeare, "Think an hour more; then, if your confidence grow strong on you, you'll leave it in place."

Sudden silence slammed down inside the Theatre. Shakespeare hoped his own jaw didn't drop too far.

The first line and a half were taken straight from the hired man's part, while the last five words were the sort of half-line of blank verse any player could make up in his sleep.

Blank verse sounded like natural speech. Sounding like natural speech was its reason for being. Lope didn't, wouldn't, couldn't know the words came from Boudicca. But everyone else did, and the Spaniard did notice the dismay on the stage. "Is somewhat amiss?" he asked.

"No, naught." Shakespeare hoped he sounded convincing. "Merely a dumb-show: ay, an ass-head; a stuffed man; a very dull fool-in sooth, a most imperceiverant thing."

"I do not follow," Lope said.

Quinn did, entirely too well. "You breeder of dire events!" he shouted, his fat face purpling. "You sneaking fellow! You still and dumb-discoursive devil that tempts most cunningly!" He didn't quite come out and scream that Shakespeare was a traitor, but he didn't miss by much, either.

"Long-tongued babbling gossip!" Shakespeare retorted. "Damnable box of envy!"

"Enough!" Richard Burbage cried. "Hold! Give over, you rabble of vile confederates, or answer to me."

He folded one hand into a massive fist.

Shakespeare fell silent. He'd already said too much. So had Quinn-much too much. And so, for that matter, had Burbage. The hired man, periwig slightly askew, looked ready to say much more. But Burbage advanced on him, that fist drawn back and ready to fly. Quinn thought better of it.

Lope laughed. "You are a band of brothers, and fight like it," he said.

"E'en so." Shakespeare laughed, too, he hoped convincingly. "And now, meseems, we should ready ourselves for the day's play. We shall resume King Philip on the morrow, or the day after."

"Be it so, then." Lope's voice held regret. "Would we might work more now, but I understand you must set the play at hand before the play to come." He touched the brim of his hat. "This day's rehearsal done, I must away, having other duties. Give you good morrow, gentles." He hurried out of the Theatre.

As soon as he was gone, Shakespeare and Matt Quinn started screaming at each other again. "Hold!"

Burbage shouted again. He pointed at the hired man. "You, sirrah, played the sparrow astrut afore the cat. That he doth not pounce means not that he may not pounce." His finger swung towards Shakespeare. "And you, sirrah, strook too hard, putting us in danger worse than any sprung of Master Quinn's folly. Had the Spaniard commenced to dig. But he did not, and all's well. We go forward, then, with such caution as we may find."

"Your pardon, I pray you," Shakespeare said. He turned to Matthew Quinn. More reluctantly, he also said, " Your pardon, I pray," to the hired player.

"Let it go," Quinn answered. "When we play is time enough for these lines you have writ me."

"Ay. Fire 'em too soon, and they fail of their purpose." Shakespeare wondered why Decius' part excited the other man: it was neither large nor important. But then, Matt Quinn had never enjoyed much luck in the theatre. Despite more than a little talent, he'd managed to offend someone or to take sick at just the wrong moment four or five different times, killing whatever chance he might have had of becoming something more than a man who could do small roles well enough but would never get a big one. Maybe he was glad of any part he could claim.

And maybe, too, he was nothing but a loudmouthed fool. Shakespeare had known plenty of those in his years in the theatre. He did wish Lord Westmorland's Men hadn't been burdened with this one at this vital moment. Had he dared, he would have asked Burbage to sack Quinn. Glancing over towards the hired man, he shook his head. No, he didn't dare. Quinn knew too much-knew much too much. If he were sacked, if he were disgruntled, wouldn't he go straight to the Spaniards and sing his song?

Shakespeare found it all too likely.

The afternoon's play was Shakespeare's If You Like It, which the company had performed many times before. In fact, Shakespeare remembered, they'd put it on the day Marlowe had first dragged him into this conspiracy. Having done it so often, the players didn't need a lot of rehearsal to be fresh.

Shakespeare went back to his lodging as soon as he could after it was over.

When he returned to the Theatre the next morning, players and stagehands stood in little knots with their heads together. "Here, what now?" Shakespeare called; that was no sight he cared to see

Edward, the tireman's helper, said, "Matt Quinn was dyeing scarlet at the Bull Inn yesternight, and he-"

"At the Bull Inn?" Shakespeare interrupted. "In Bishopsgate? Not far from mine own lodgings?"

"The same," Edward said. "And in's cups he did go on more than considerable from Boudicca, ay, and about the same. Will Kemp heard him, every word, as did all too many not initiate in our mystery."

"If men were to be saved by merit, what hole in hell were hot enough for Quinn?" Shakespeare cried, clapping a hand to his forehead. "Truly he is damned, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side." He started to say more, and more fiery, still, but checked himself. "Where's Kemp? I'd have this from's own lips."

He looked around. "Come to that, where's the drunken roarer himself? I'd have the tale of's folly from his own lips."

"Master Kemp's in the tiring room," Edward replied. "As for Master Quinn, he hath not deigned to spread himself upon our stage this day."

"Is he drunk asleep?" Shakespeare cried. "Or in the bought, illicit pleasure of his bed? At game a-swearing, or about some act that hath no relish of salvation in it? Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, and that his soul may be damned and black as hell, whereto it goes."

Edward spread his hands. "I know not, Master Shakespeare. I know only, he is not here. As to the why of't. " He shook his head.

"If he repent of his drunken antic and, thinking to save himself from the fruit thereof, if he flee to the dons. " Shakespeare's voice trailed away, as Edward's had a moment before.

Richard Burbage came out of the tiring room just in time to hear that. "Marry, God prevent it!" he exclaimed. "But now I will sack that whoreson knave, Will. Speak not against it. Speak not of caution.

My mind's made up." Having played many kings, he could sound like one at need.

"I'll say not a word," Shakespeare answered. "Meseems, though, amongst our other cares that's small beer."

"Who'll take his role, an he come not?" Edward asked.

Burbage stabbed out a finger at the muscular young man. "Will you essay it? He hath but a handful of lines, nor need you no dancing shoes with nimble soles."

Edward gaped. Then an enormous grin stretched across his face. "I'll do't, sir! Learn me those lines, and I'll have 'em by heart quick as boiled asparagus. Do you but show me whence I am to go on, and whither to go off, and I'm your man. God bless you for the chance!"

"What fools these youngsters be!" Will Kemp exclaimed emerging from the tiring room behind Burbage.

His shoulders shook with laughter. He glanced towards Shakespeare. "Were you ever so all afire to make an ass of yourself before the general?"

"I? Hotter than Edward dreams of being," Shakespeare answered. "And now and again an ass I made of me. So do we all."

Matthew Quinn did not come to the Theatre. Edward took his part, and managed. well enough.

Thomas Vincent had to hiss some of his lines to him the second time he came on, but he brought them out loud enough and remembered to face the audience so they could be heard. If nervous sweat darkened the armpits of his tunic, well, it was a warm day. Other players were sweating, too.

After the play, everyone made much of the tireman's assistant. Shakespeare heard Quinn's name come up only once. When it did, someone-he couldn't see who-said, "He is to us a dead man." Heads in the tiring room solemnly went up and down.

From the Theatre, Shakespeare had come down almost to Bishopsgate when a man stepped out of an alley and into his way on Shoreditch High Street. The fellow was about his own age, a wide-shouldered brunet, clean-shaven, with his hair cropped short, as Puritans had worn theirs before the Inquisition set out to stifle Protestantism of all stripes. His doublet might have been fine when it was new, but it hadn't been new for years. Instead of hose, he wore a sailor's striped trousers.

When he didn't move aside, Shakespeare said, "Yes? You want somewhat of me?" He gathered himself.

If what the stranger wanted was his money, he'd get a fight first.

And then the fellow smiled, and spoke, and suddenly was a stranger no more. "By my troth, Will," he said, "if you know me not, then who will?"

"Kit?" Shakespeare gaped. "But-but-you took ship in Deptford!"

Even Marlowe's smile looked different without the fringe of beard and the long hair that had framed his face. "Ay, I took ship in Deptford-and left the ghastly scow in Margate. Sithence I've changed my seeming and my style: call me Charles Munday, if you please."

"I'll call you an idiot, a fond monster, a mad mooncalf dotard," Shakespeare exclaimed. "You could be safe away, but no! You'll have none of safety! Should any man pierce your shorn locks. "

"Where could I live but London?" Marlowe asked. "This place hath life! All other towns are as dead beside it."

"This place hath your death, on the gibbet or worse," Shakespeare said. "Where will you live? How will you eat?"

"Where, I'll keep in my own privity-what you know not, no inquisitor may rip from you," Marlowe said, and Shakespeare was forcibly reminded of his own danger. The other poet went on, "As for how, no man with a quick pen need-quite-fear starving, and that I have. How fares Boudicca?"

Even in mortal danger, Marlowe would speak of things better left unthought, let alone unsaid. "I know that name not," Shakespeare answered stonily. "Till the day, I know it not. E'en after the day, haply shall I know it not."

"You may be wise," said Marlowe-who, Shakespeare realized, hadn't changed his initials with his name.

"Or, like as not, you may be but a different sort of fool, showing forth a different sort of folly."

Thinking of all the rehearsals for Boudicca he'd watched, Shakespeare could only nod.

Lope De Vega fought to keep his face from showing how bored and how annoyed he was. How many times had Captain Baltasar GuzmA?n summoned him to his office, only to wave a sheet of paper in his face and then not let him see what it was?

But, though GuzmA?n waved this sheet of paper like any other, he startled Lope by handing it to him and saying, "Here. This may possibly be of some interest to you, Senior Lieutenant."

"Ah?" Lope rapidly read through it. His eyes got wider and wider with each succeeding line. He didn't realize how far his jaw had fallen till he needed to speak again and had to pull it up again. "But this.

this, your Excellency. this is from a printer. A printer in Madrid. In. in the capital." Realizing he was babbling, he fell silent again.

Captain Guzmnn nodded. "Yes, a printer," he said. "I told you that, if El mejor mozo de Espana succeeded, I would send it and La dama boba back to Spain, to put them before the civilized world. El mejor mozo de Espana won praise from no less than the daughter of his Most Catholic Majesty. I keep my promises."

"This says. " De Vega made himself stop starting and stopping every few words. "This says the printer likes the plays-he admires them, he says-and that he would be delighted and honored to put them into print. Delighted and honored! God and the holy Virgin and all the saints bless you, your Excellency! I am going to be in print! In print, at last! I shall be remembered forever!"

So many plays died with their creators. Once he was there no more, who cared about, who remembered, the children of his imagination? They died with him. As worms ate him, oblivion swallowed him. But to leave behind work in print. A hundred years from this moment, or two hundred, or four hundred, someone could take a book of his plays off the shelf, leaf through it, and decide to put on La dama boba. And when the lady nitwit went up on stage, Lope would live again.

With a sardonic smile, Captain GuzmA?n returned him to the present: "While you are here and merely mortal, Senior Lieutenant, do you recall any mention of Sir William Cecil at the Theatre?"

"Of Lord Burghley? No, your Excellency," Lope answered. "I don't remember ever hearing his name there, though I have heard he's dying."

"He is nearly dead. He is older than Philip, and fails faster. I never did understand why his Most Catholic Majesty spared him after the conquest, but that was his will. Maybe he respected a worthy foe; Burghley towered above the other men, the little men, who advised Elizabeth. Every Spanish officer I know is sure he had one last damnable plot in him, but no one ever sniffed it out."

"Over in Westminster, Don Diego said much the same thing, sir," de Vega said. "But I have seen nothing in the Theatre to make me think Lord Westmorland's Men involved."

"Not the murder of Geoffrey Martin?" Guzman asked.

"No, sir," Lope replied. "For all that the mad English constable in Shoreditch mumbles about someone knowing someone who knows someone else-I think that's what he mumbles, for he speaks in riddles (often, I believe, riddles to himself)-he has no proof, none whatever, Martin's murder was anything but an ordinary knifing in an ordinary robbery."

"It could be." GuzmA?n's voice was studiously noncommittal. "Yes, it could be. But, in that case, what of the murder of Matthew Quinn?"

"The murder of-?" That brought Lope up short. "But I saw this Quinn alive and rehearsing only a few days, a very few days, ago. He's dead? When? How?"

"As for when, by the smell and the other signs, only a few days ago-I presume after you saw him last."

GuzmA?n had a wit so dry, Lope had taken longer than he should have to notice it was there at all. Now he went on, "As for how. " He drew a finger across his throat.

"Where did they find him?" de Vega asked.

"In an alley behind and down the street from a tavern called the Bull Inn, in Bishopsgate," Baltasar GuzmA?n replied. "It is not far from SeA±or Shakespeare's lodgings, whatever that may mean. The body was found without a purse, without a penny, so this may have been a simple robbery. It may-but, then again, it may not."

"Yes." Lope plucked at his neat little chin beard. "One murder in a company of actors-that means nothing. I wouldn't mind murdering one actor in that company myself. But two? Two murders from the same small group do make you wonder. Was Quinn doing anything out of the way in this tavern?"

GuzmA?n favored him with an approving glance. He didn't get that many from his superior, and basked in this one. The nobleman said, "Now that, Senior Lieutenant, that is a very interesting question. What I wish we had is an interesting answer. We have no answer at all. No one we can find who was in the tavern that night admits to remembering Quinn at all. No one."

"Not even the taverner?" Lope scowled. "Quinn liked to hear himself talk, and he wore an ill-fitting periwig. He would not be easy to forget."

"Someone had stolen the periwig, too, by the time the body was found," Captain GuzmA?n remarked.

Lope made a small, disgusted noise. GuzmA?n nodded and continued, "No, not even the taverner. He says Quinn wasn't a regular and he never wastes much time with people who aren't regulars. People who are regulars swear he is telling the truth."

"Would they say the same if we questioned them-properly?" De Vega had no trouble contemplating torture, but didn't care to come right out and name it.

"Another interesting question. Maybe, for that one, we'll find an answer," Baltasar GuzmA?n replied.

"Meanwhile, though, I want you to work with this Constable Strawberry, who has been trying to catch whoever killed Geoffrey Martin. Maybe he can help us here, if these two killings are connected."

"Yes, your Excellency," Lope said dutifully. But he couldn't help heaving a sigh. "I don't much like this Englishman, though, and I don't think he's very bright."

"As may be-he is the man on the spot, and he has been working on the matter since Martin died,"

Guzman said. "Martin was a good Catholic man. His killing should not go unpunished."

"Was Quinn a good Catholic man?" Lope asked.

Looking unhappy, Captain Guzman shook his head. "No, or no one thinks so. Before we came here, he was a Protestant. He went to Mass afterwards, but no one ever thought he was pious."

"No link there, then," Lope said. GuzmA?n sent him a warning look. He hastily added, "But I'll go find out if there are any others."

Feeling put upon, he rode up to Shoreditch. When he got there, one of the watchmen who assisted the constable told him Strawberry was out on rounds. The fellow had only a vague idea of where Strawberry might be found. I could be at the Theatre, Lope thought resentfully, not chasing down this slow-witted Englishman who isn't likely to know much anyway.

He finally came upon Walter Strawberry marching up a muddy street, swinging a truncheon by its leather thong. "Give you good day, Constable," he called, hurrying towards the other man.

"Why, Master de Vega, as I live and expire," Strawberry said, tipping his hat. "Greetings and palpitations to you, sir."

"Er-thank you," Lope said. Listening to the constable always reminded him English was a foreign language. "I have just learned of the death of the player, Matthew Quinn."

"He died the death, indeed. Murther. Murther most foul, and robbery of's periwig-another felony besides," Strawberry said. "Mind you, I am factitious of who the miscegenate was."

"Are you?" Lope said. Constable Strawberry solemnly nodded. De Vega asked, "Think you this slaying hath connection to that of Geoffrey Martin?"

"Connection? Connection?" the Englishman said. "Why, man, if some low cove had not connection with Geoff Martin, and now with Quinn, they'd not be slain. Will you tell me I'm wrong?" He stuck out his jaw in challenge.

"Meseems you have mistook me," Lope said. "Be there in your view connection betwixt Masters Martin and Quinn?"

"Give me leave to doubt it, sir. They were both honest men, or honest enough, and with such vice square against all conjunctions Biblical-"

De Vega muttered a quick Pater noster. He hoped God was listening. Trying to get through to Walter Strawberry was like going to the dentist, save that Strawberry drew sense rather than teeth. "Let me try once more," Lope said with what he reckoned commendable calm. "Think you the same man did slay these twain?"

"Ay, belike," the constable said-at last, a definite answer.

Lope felt like cheering. "And who was this man?"

"Why, the murtherer, assuredly." Strawberry stared at him. "Who else might he be?"

Another Pater noster did not suffice de Vega. Neither did crossing himself. Through clenched teeth, he asked, "What calls he himself? — this man you reckon the murtherer, I mean."

"Know you of a wicked cove, hight Ingram Frizer?"

"No, sir. I ken him not." Lope shook his head.

"Well, him I believe to be the benefactor in question."

"I am sorry, sir," Lope said. "I am most terribly sorry. One of us hath of your tongue a grasp imperfect.

Which that may be. " He threw his hands in the air. "I own I know not."

"I have spake English since I was a puling babe: it is the tongue of my captivity," Strawberry said. "You, then, needs must be inerrant."

"Would I were!" Lope exclaimed. "Tell me more of this man Frizer." Maybe he would learn something.

He dared hope. Stranger things must have happened, though none occurred to him offhand.

"He hath a knife and a temper and a quick way with both," Constable Strawberry said, and de Vega understood every word. The Englishman went on, "You being intermittent with them of the Theatre, I feel it recumbent upon me to give you fair warning: this Ingram Frizer hath acquaintance with Nick Skeres."

He paused expectantly.

"Again, I am sorry, but this name I know not," Lope said.

"Do you not? Do you not indeed, sir? Well, Master Skeres, though he'll not slit your weasand with a cuttle, still and all he is a most vile cozening rogue, a cheat such that Judas In's Chariot hath not seen the like. And"-another portentous pause-" he hath acquaintance with Master Shakespeare, the poetaster."

"Poetaster? Shakespeare? You show yourself no judge of poesy, Master Strawberry, an you place him so low. Can it be doubted he is amongst the finest poets of our time? I think not."

"Can it be doubted he knows Nick Skeres? I think not," Strawberry returned.

Again, Lope understood every word, at least individually. What he didn't understand was what, if anything, all those words meant taken together. He muttered something nasty under his breath, knowing he had no choice but to try to find out.

After another performance as the ghost in Prince of Denmark, Shakespeare scrubbed chalk and black greasepaint from his face in the tiring room. Every so often, someone would come up and tell him how frightful he'd been. His thanks were distinctly abstracted. He kept looking around the room, wondering if Christopher Marlowe would dare appear. His fellow poet would make a ghost even less welcome than that of the unhappy prince's father.

Thus far, no sign of Marlowe. Shakespeare knew nothing but relief. Maybe Kit's folly had limits after all.

Maybe. He dared hope.

"Well played, Master Shakespeare! Most well played!"

Shakespeare had a towel over his eyes at that moment, but he didn't need to see to be sure who spoke to him. "For which kindness I do thank you, Lieutenant de Vega," he replied.

"It is nothing, nothing at all," Lope said grandly.

When Shakespeare took the towel away from his face, he got a surprise after all, for there beside the Spaniard stood Cicely Sellis, Mommet perched on her shoulder. Hoping to hide his alarm, Shakespeare bowed to the cunning woman. "Give you good day as well, Mistress Sellis."

"And to you," she replied. "I have more than once before seen you give the ghost, but never, methinks, better than today."

"You are too generous by half," Shakespeare murmured. I'd liefer give than give up the ghost, he thought. But have I the choice? He turned to Lope de

Vega and murmured again, this time only two words: "How now?"

How are you now come hither with Mistress Sellis and not with the Spanish jade who cost a nobleman's life? was what he meant. By the way Lope coughed a couple of times and turned red, he understood all the words Shakespeare hadn't said. But he answered smoothly, saying, "We two, being friends and having in common a friend, were together glad to see him play his famous role."

"Just so," Cicely Sellis said. Her cat yawned.

De Vega smiled. Shakespeare didn't care for the expression; Mommet might have worn it playing with a mouse. The Spaniard was going to take his revenge. And he did. "Know you a man called Ingram Frizer, Master Shakespeare?"

I might have guessed, flashed through Shakespeare's mind. No one in the company had spoken much of Matthew Quinn's death. No one had seemed much surprised to hear of it, either, not when Quinn's tongue had flapped so free. But two murders in one company had drawn the dons' notice as well as that of Constable Strawberry, and Shakespeare didn't suppose he should have been much surprised at that.

No more than a heartbeat slower than he should have, he shook his head and answered, "Frizer? No, Lieutenant, I ken no one of that name." Nobody could prove otherwise-he hoped. A question of his own seemed safe: "Why ask you me of him?"

Sure enough, de Vega replied, "He is suspect in the murther of the player, Quinn."

"May the hangman sell the rope by which he dances on the air, then," Shakespeare said. "But why, I pray you, think you he and I be known each to the other?"

"For that you are both known to one Nicholas Skeres," the Spanish officer said, his voice suddenly hard.

How much did he know? If he knew enough, he wouldn't have brought Cicely Sellis along while he asked questions-he would have brought a squad of soldiers and dragged Shakespeare away. Realizing that helped the poet quell his fear. Lope was only fishing for whatever he might find.

Shakespeare resolved to give him as little as he could: "I have met Nicholas Skeres, ay, but he is no friend of mine. Indeed, I misdoubt him not a little; as I live, he is like as not a queer-bird, his name writ down in the Black Book." He had no idea whether Skeres had actually gone to prison and had his name inscribed in the register, but he wouldn't have been surprised. And he didn't mind in the least slandering a man he truly disliked. Skeres, he was sure, could take care of himself.

Lope said, "This marches with that which you told unto Constable Strawberry."

Damn Constable Strawberry for a very superficial, ignorant, unweighing fellow, Shakespeare thought. "Is not the truth the truth?" he said aloud. "That truth should be silent I had almost forgot."

"I know not whether 'tis truth or another thing," de Vega answered. "I do know I will find where truth be hid, though it were hid indeed within the center. That a man saith twice the same thing proves not its truth, but only his constancy."

"Are we not friends here?" Cicely Sellis asked. "Use friends each the other so?"

To Shakespeare's surprise, Lope bowed to her and said, "You are as wise as you are lovely. Let it be as you would have't, of course."

She sketched a curtsy. She didn't bend low, to keep Mommet from either falling off or sinking in his claws. "Gramercy," she said. "In a false quarrel there is no true valor."

Lope nodded. "That is well said."

"Indeed it is," Shakespeare agreed. But he knew the Spaniard hadn't stopped digging-he'd only paused while in the cunning woman's company. Even that was a good deal more than Shakespeare had expected. He watched the way de Vega's eyes caressed her. He'd fain be more than friend, the poet realized. What tangled skein have we here, and how will it unravel? He tried to imagine Lope coming regularly to the Widow Kendall's lodging-house, walking into Cicely Sellis' room, closing the door behind him.

Would Mommet watch? he wondered. Could a man bed a witch, her puckrel attending her? Would it not unman him? He eyed her himself. Would I know these things for the don's sake, or for mine own?

Haply for mine own.

Cicely Sellis' eyes, gray as the northern seas, met his own-met them and held them. Not for the first time, he had the feeling she knew every thought in his head. Considering what some of those thoughts were. He feared he blushed like a schoolboy.

If the cunning woman truly could divine his mind, she gave no sign of it. She leaned towards Lope and spoke to him in a voice too low for Shakespeare to make out. The Spaniard nodded, his smile indulgent-and more than a little hungry. A moment later, he was making his goodbyes to Shakespeare and leading her out of the tiring room.

Richard Burbage came over to the poet. "The don hath another new woman?"

Shakespeare only shrugged. "I cannot say. That he would have her, though, I doubt not. She is the cunning woman, hight Cicely Sellis, of whom I may once or twice have spoke."

Burbage's eyes got wide. "The one dwelling in your lodging-house?"

"The same."

"I hope that damned witch, that damned sorceress, hath wrought this hellish mischief unawares," Burbage said, his deep voice somber.

"Of.?" Shakespeare let the title of the play hang unspoken in the air.

"Of that, and of other things," the player answered.

"So I hope as well, but Cicely Sellis, methinks, is unaware of very little."

"Will she discover to the Spaniard that which she knows?" Burbage asked nervously.

"I. think not." Shakespeare wanted to shake his head and say such a thing was impossible, unimaginable. He wanted to, but knew too well he couldn't. He and Cicely Sellis had hardly spoken of things political. Few in occupied England said much about such things, except to those they knew would not betray them. Trusting the wrong man-or woman-was among the worst mistakes anyone could make.

"You think not?" Richard Burbage echoed, and Shakespeare nodded. Burbage persisted: "No more than that can you say?" Now the poet did shake his head. Burbage looked very unhappy indeed, for which Shakespeare could not blame him. He asked, "And will she too meet the smiler with the knife under the cloak?"

That made Shakespeare blink. He'd used Chaucer as a source for a couple of his plays, but hadn't known Burbage read The Canterbury Tales. Asking him about that, though, would wait for some other time. "Why to me put you this question?" he said, speaking in a near-whisper to make sure no one else in the tiring room heard. "I knew naught of poor Geoff's murther aforetimes, nor of Matt Quinn's, neither."

Burbage said nothing. His silence felt more devastating than any words could have. Shakespeare grimaced and turned away. He'd told the truth. As so often happened, it did him no good at all.

And, when he got back to his lodging-house, he found Jane Kendall in a swivet. "A Spaniard!" the widow hissed at him as soon as he walked through the door. "She came hither with a Spaniard!" She crossed herself. Being sincerely Catholic, she preferred Isabella and Albert on the throne to Elizabeth, but had no great love for the stern soldiers who'd set them there. Such contradictions were anything but rare these days.

"Rest you easy, Mistress Kendall," Shakespeare said; another upset was the last thing he needed. "The don is known to me: a sweet-faced man; a proper man."

"But he is a don," the Widow Kendall said. "Be he never so sweet-faced, he is a don, a busy meddling fiend." She paused, then made the sign of the cross again. "And I dare not even rate her for't, lest she do me a mischief with her foul witchery." Her voice fell to a barely audible whisper: "Is he her sweetheart?"

"I know not, not to a surety," Shakespeare answered. "He'd have it so, meseems, but oft yawns a gulf

'twixt what a man would and what a woman will."

Jane Kendall sniffed. "Saith she, I am a widow. And how many queans and callets and low harlots say the same?"

Shakespeare thought Cicely Sellis might be a great many things. A whore? Never. He didn't argue with the Widow Kendall, though. He'd long since seen there was no point to that. He simply headed for his bedchamber, saying, "I needs must take pen and paper, and then I'm for the ordinary and supper and, God grant it, some tolerable verses."

His landlady couldn't complain so loudly as was her custom, not when she feared the cunning woman and so also feared being overheard. That let him get out of the house and off to the ordinary. By the time he came back, Jane Kendall had gone to bed. So did he, not much later.

He was on his way up to the Theatre the next morning when Nicholas Skeres slid out of a side street and fell into step with him. "Aroint thee!" Shakespeare exclaimed. "I'd liefer see a black cat cross my path than thee. I am suspect for that we are acquainted, and known to be acquainted."

Skeres didn't get angry, which disappointed Shakespeare-he longed for a quarrel, even a fight. "I'll begone anon," the clever but ill-favored man said. "First, though, you must know at once: Lord Burghley is no more. He died yesternight, in's sleep."

"God save us," Shakespeare whispered. He'd expected the news since the last time he saw Nick Skeres.

Hearing it jolted him even so.

"God save us indeed," Skeres answered now. "God and good St. George save England-God and St.

George and you, Master Shakespeare."

"I am sure as need be this cloth hath more threads than mine own," Shakespeare said, and Nicholas Skeres did not contradict him. He went on, "God grant Robert Cecil hath hold of them all." Skeres nodded, then slipped away. Shakespeare trudged on towards the Theatre, alone with his thoughts.

Lope De Vega and Catalina Ibanez sat in a tavern in Westminster, drinking sweet Rhenish wine and glaring at each other across the table. "You never take me anywhere," Catalina complained. "I might as well be in a convent, for all the fun I have with you."

"That is not so," Lope said indignantly. "Did we not go to the bear-baiting only two nights ago? Was it not a fine spectacle?" Going back to Southwark gave him a twinge, but he'd done it for Catalina. Since she was, at the moment, his only lover, he'd feared no disaster. Nor had he suffered one. He'd had a good time, and thought she had, too.

Maybe she had, but she didn't show it now. "Bear-baiting!" She laced the words with scorn. "Where are the balls, where are the feasts, where are the masques Don Alejandro used to take me to? I ask you that-where are they? You'd better have a good answer for me, too." Her eyes flashed dangerously.

With such patience as he could muster, de Vega answered, "My dear, Don Alejandro was a nobleman, and a man newly come from Spain. Of course he got invited to these things. I am only a senior lieutenant.

I wish I were in great demand. Unfortunately, though. "

"Oh, why did I ever take up with you?" Catalina seemed more likely to be asking God than Lope.

Lope answered nonetheless: "For love?"

"Love?" She waved away the very idea. "When Queen Isabella tossed you that purse after we put on El mejor mozo de EspaA±a, I thought you were going places. But the only place you want to go is the English theatre."

"I wish you spoke the language," Lope said. "There's so much to see, so much to admire, so much to learn."

Catalina Ibanez yawned in his face. "So much to be bored by. I've been bored every single minute since we started seeing each other."

" Every minute?" Lope said. "I think not, my dear." If she'd faked her pleasure, she was a far better actress even than she'd shown on stage.

She didn't deign to respond to the sly dig. Instead, she said, "I never should have told anyone you killed poor Don Alejandro in a fair fight. If you don't start treating me better, I'll tell people what really happened, there in that yard."

"What really happened?" Lope didn't spring from his stool. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't so much as lean forward. Menace filled his words and manner even so. "What do you mean? Tell me most precisely."

Intent on herself, Catalina Ibanez didn't notice the menace, not at first. "Why, how you lay in wait for him and. and. " Her voice trailed away.

Too late. Too slow. Lope said, "You will not do that." He spoke as calmly as if he were telling her, The sun will come up tomorrow. "If you think you can blackmail me, my sweet, you had better think again.

Do you remember what Don Alejandro's body looked like? That could be you."

"You wouldn't d. " But Catalina once more failed to finish her sentence. Lope might. What would stop him? He'd already done it to Don Alejandro de Recalde.

"Do you want to try me? Do you want to find out what I would or wouldn't do?" Lope asked. "Go right ahead, my love. You'll learn everything you ever wanted to know, I promise you that."

"You are a monster! An animal!" Catalina said shrilly.

De Vega inclined his head. "At your service, seA±orita. Always at your service."

"My service!" she said. "The best service you could give me would be never to see me again."

"If that's how you would have it, so shall it be." Lope got to his feet. He swept off his hat and bowed low.

"Pity a man died over so small and passing a thing as your affection, but such is life. But even if we are quits, do bear in mind that I shall know if you go telling lies about me to those in authority. You may think you can ruin me. You may even be right. But I promise you, I will have my revenge. Do you doubt it?"

Catalina Ibanez looked as if she would have liked nothing better than to do exactly that. But all she said was, "N-n-n-no"-as frightened a stammer as he'd ever heard.

He had no idea whether to believe her. He refused to worry about it either way. If she did go to the authorities with her lies, they might or might not take her seriously. Whether they did or not, honor demanded that he avenge the slight. He would do it, too, at whatever cost to himself. She had to know that. She wasn't wise in the ways of book learning, but she was shrewd.

With another bow, Lope said, "Farewell, my former dear. I shall remember you in my dreams-and, if God is kind, nowhere else." He strode out of the wineshop. A quick glance over his shoulder showed him Catalina staring after him, her eyes enormous in a face gone pale and yellow as goat's-milk cheese.

He went out into the street just in time to see Sir William Cecil's funeral procession pass by, carrying deposed Elizabeth's great counselor from Westminster to his final resting place in St. Paul's cathedral in London. De Vega hadn't thought any Englishman, especially one of such dubious loyalty, could be buried with so much pomp. But, when he saw how many people lined the street for a last glimpse of Lord Burghley's earthly remains even here in Westminster, a stronghold of Isabella and Albert and the Spaniards, he realized the powers that be hadn't dared say no to this procession, for fear of riots or worse.

Four white horses draped in black velvet decorated with Sir William's coat of arms drew the bier through the streets. More velvet, this of a deep purple hue, covered the coffin that held Cecil's corpse. Above the coffin was an effigy of the dead English nobleman, his arms folded over this chest in the shape of the cross. A canopy of black velvet, again picked out with the Cecil coat of arms, shielded the effigy from the August sun.

In the wake of the bier walked Robert Cecil, Lord Burghley's son. The pale little man with his twisted back seemed out of place in that robust sun; the black velvet of mourning he wore only accented his pallor. Just for a moment, his eyes met Lope's. He nodded, as if to a friend, and kept on walking.

Behind him came several other prominent Englishmen, of his generation and his father's. Lope recognized Francis Bacon, who, being Lord Burghley's nephew, could hardly be blamed for mourning his passing.

Some of the others, though, surprised de Vega. Sir William Cecil had had more friends than he'd believed among the men who ran the country for Queen Isabella and King Albert.

Many of those men, no doubt, would have been as glad to run England for Elizabeth the heretic. Lope's eyes flicked east, towards the Tower where she remained. In an odd way, killing Mary Queen of Scots might have saved Elizabeth's life. Not wanting to be a regicide himself, King Philip hadn't imitated her and had let her live.

Catalina Ibanez came out of the wineshop. Seeing Lope standing there watching the funeral procession move on towards London, she snarled something that would have made a grizzled muleteer blush, then stalked away. I don't suppose I'll see her again, de Vega thought with a sigh. I don't need to waste any worries on her, though. She's bound to land on her feet or on her back or wherever will do her the most good. But even so. He sighed again.

Beside him, someone spoke in English-accented Spanish: "There's a dangerous foe of Isabella and Albert dead."

Lope started. "Oh. Buenos dias, Senor Phelippes. My head must have been in the clouds, for I noted you not when you came up. I am most sorry." He bowed in apology.

Thomas Phelippes politely returned the bow. "Nothing to worry about, Senior Lieutenant." He continued to speak Spanish, where Lope had replied mostly in English.

"Tell me," de Vega said, "what think you of Robert Cecil, Lord Burghley's son and heir?"

To answer that, Phelippes returned to English himself, as if he couldn't be scornful enough in Spanish:

"Small curs are not regarded when they grin. He is as full of quarrel and offense as my young mistress'

dog. An untaught puppy, by my troth: you shall see him heave up his leg, and make water against a gentlewoman's farthingale."

Lope laughed in delight at the unexpectedness of that. "Not the man his father was, then, by your reckoning?"

"Not half the man, sir, not in any particular," the Englishman answered. "Not in height nor in girth, not in years nor in wisdom, not in paunch nor in pizzle: a dear manikin, such a dish of skim milk as the world hath not seen the likes of since Nero's day."

"You ease my mind," Lope said. "I shall take your opinion to Captain GuzmA?n, who hath some concern o'er the son of such a father."

"Far from fearing such as Robert Cecil, your good captain may set all plain sail and dread naught,"

Thomas Phelippes said. "I have told Don Diego Flores de ValdA©s the same."

"By God, sir, this is good to hear," de Vega said. "I grieve only that his Most Catholic Majesty will not long outlive the foe he in's mercy spared."

"The Lord moves in mysterious ways, blessed be His name." Phelippes crossed himself. Lope did the same. The pockmarked, bespectacled little Englishman continued, "I had me the privilege of writing out the parts from Shakespeare's King Philip, making fair copy for the players' use. Though it were builded of brick and marble, a man might have a lesser monument."

"Mine own thought is much the same," de Vega agreed.

Phelippes bowed again. "May that production come not soon," he said. "And now, sir, your pardon, but I must away." He hurried off in the direction-Lope thought it was the direction-of the palace where he and Don Diego helped administer the Spanish occupation of England. Lope had intended to go back to London, but Lord Burghley's funeral procession would surely clog the Strand for some time to come.

With Catalina Ibanez gone, he ducked back into the wineshop instead.

Whenever Shakespeare left his lodging-house or the Theatre these days, the first thing he did was anxiously peer in all directions. He didn't want to see Nick Skeres coming his way with more bad news. And he especially didn't want to see Ingram Frizer, who might come his way with death.

He was supping on boiled beef and marrow bones stewed with barley and parsnips and mushrooms when Thomas Phelippes walked into the ordinary. By then, he'd come into the place often enough that Kate called to him: "A cup of the Rhenish, sir, as you've drunk before?"

"If you'd be so kind, mistress," Phelippes replied. He pulled up a stool at Shakespeare's table and sat down, saying, "Give you good even."

Shakespeare had raised a bone to his lips. He sucked out the rich, delicate marrow with a small, almost involuntary, sound of pleasure. Then he set the bone back in the bowl; this was no low dive, nor was he a rustic or a ruffian, to throw his refuse on the floor. "God give you good den as well, Master Phelippes,"

he said grudgingly. Was the pockmarked little man a companion any safer than Skeres or Frizer? He had his doubts.

The serving woman brought Phelippes his wine. He set a penny on the table. She scooped it up. He eyed her as she walked off with it; candlelight glinted from the lenses of his spectacles. "A likely wench," he remarked.

"Think you so?" Shakespeare said, as neutrally as he could. He sprinkled some salt from the saltcellar into his stew. "What would you?" he asked in a low voice. "You came not, meseems, for to praise the lady's beauty, however praiseworthy she be."

Phelippes nodded. "There you speak sooth, sir." He pointed to the pewter spoon Shakespeare had brought to the ordinary. "Eat up, quick as you may. I'd have you come with me."

"What? Tonight? Now?" Shakespeare yelped. Thomas Phelippes nodded again. "Whither? Wherefore?"

the poet demanded. "I'd purposed work of mine own this even. The one commission and the other both being done, as you will have seen"-he couldn't resist the gibe, for he remained unsure who Phelippes'

true master was-"I dared hope I might pursue a notion no one set me."

"Be ever at enmity with cozening hope; he is a flatterer," Phelippes said. Shakespeare glared at him.

Wasted effort: he gave no more heed than a snake to the frantic stares of a bird it swallowed. He went on, "Come away with me. Someone would fain take counsel with you."

"Someone?" Shakespeare echoed. Phelippes nodded once more. "Who?" the poet asked. The other man cocked his head to one side. The dancing candle flame filled his spectacle lenses with light and lent him for a moment an inhuman cast of feature. Shakespeare mouthed Robert Cecil's name. Phelippes gave him yet another nod. Knowing he couldn't refuse, Shakespeare did eat quickly. When he'd finished the meat and the parsnips, he took up his writing tools and got to his feet. "Lead on, Master Phelippes."

Seeing him head for the door instead of settling down to write, Kate called after him in surprise and alarm: "Is all well, Will?"

"Well enough, or so I hope," he answered. That wouldn't reassure her. He hoped it would unsettle Phelippes. If anything happened to him, the alarm would spread quickly. The other question was, did Phelippes-did Robert Cecil-care? Shakespeare had to believe they did. If they would kill him when he'd done them no harm, when he'd labored long and hard to aid their cause, how were they better than the dons?

Outside the ordinary, darkness hung thick, almost palpable. As August moved towards September, nights were getting longer again, and colder, too. When Shakespeare sighed, he could see the vapor of his own breath. Somewhere high overhead, an owl hooted. Tiny skitterings from close by the walls said rats and mice went about their business even so.

"Whither away?" Shakespeare asked again. In that smothering dark, he felt as much a skulker as the skittering vermin.

Instead of answering with words, Thomas Phelippes set off at a brisk pace. Can I endure this arrogance? And from this fellow? Sadly, Shakespeare knew he had no choice. He followed.

He wished he had Mommet's eyes. That would have kept him from stepping in several noxious piles and puddles. By Phelippes' low-voiced-and sometimes not so low-voiced-curses, he knew the other man had the same trouble. Somehow, that didn't console him.

Phelippes led him south and west. He didn't realize how far he'd come till he saw the great bulk of St.

Paul's heaving itself up into the sky, blocking out the stars. Before long, Phelippes knocked at the door to a house that seemed neither rich nor poor. The knock had a curious rhythm to it: a code, Shakespeare thought. The door opened. "In-make haste!" someone said. Phelippes ducked inside.

Shakespeare followed once more. He wished he could turn and flee instead. If he did, though, he was grimly certain he would meet Ingram Frizer in the ruffian's professional capacity. Would Frizer smile as he drove the knife home? Shakespeare would not have bet against it.

Inside, light blazed from candles and torches and a leaping fire in the hearth, a fire better suited to winter than summer. Robert Cecil sat in a chair not far from the flames; perhaps his back pained him when he used a stool like most men. "Give you good evening, Master Shakespeare," he said, dipping his head in what was almost but not quite a seated bow.

"And to you, sir," Shakespeare replied. "My deepest condolement on your loss."

Lord Burghley's son waved him to a stool. As he perched there, nervous as a bird, the younger Cecil said, " 'Tis the kingdom should condole, not I. My father passed from us full of years, but England's savior died untimely. What he cannot now do, I needs must essay. How stand we in respect of your part therein?"

"You will know the play is writ," Shakespeare said, and Robert Cecil nodded. The poet went on, "You will also know Constable Strawberry sniffs after him who murthered both Geoff Martin and, now, Matthew Quinn."

Cecil nodded again. Thomas Phelippes said, "We merit our freedom not, an such a bedlam brainsick counterfeit module may make to totter the fabric of our designs."

"What Strawberry solus may not do, peradventure with confederates he may," Shakespeare said. "Belike you will know he concerts with Lieutenant de Vega."

Again, Phelippes was the one who spoke up: "And is not de Vega well and truly cozened? Does he not believe me friend to his enterprise? Can such a worthless post be feared?"

"Any man opposing us may be feared," said Shakespeare, who'd learned more about fear since the previous autumn than he ever wanted to know. He glanced towards Robert Cecil. Cecil kept his own counsel. He would have been a dangerous man in a game of cards; Shakespeare had no idea what he was thinking. He dared hope Cecil was thinking something, and reminded himself Lord Burghley had had a good opinion of his crookbacked son.

A servant brought in goblets of Sherris-sack and sugar to sweeten it. Everyone fell silent till the man bowed his way out of the room. Then, sipping the wine, Cecil asked, "And should I know aught else?"

Shakespeare started to shake his head, as Robert Cecil plainly expected him to do. But then he checked the motion. "Haply you should, your Honor."

One of Cecil's eyebrows rose, startlingly dark against the pallid skin of his forehead. His long, thin fingers tightened on the goblet's stem. But his voice showed nothing as he said, "Tell it me, then."

"As you know of Walter Strawberry, as you know he treats with the don, so, belike, you will know Kit Marlowe is returned to London."

That loosed a hawk amongst the pigeons. Robert Cecil started so violently, sugared sack slopped out of his goblet and onto the slashed black velvet of his doublet. "Why, thou infinite and endless liar!" Thomas Phelippes burst out.

"By my troth, sir, I am no such creature, and be damned to thine ignorant, oppressive arrogance for naming me one," Shakespeare answered angrily.

Before Phelippes could loose some hot retort of his own, Robert Cecil help up a hand. The gesture, though spare, was commanding; Phelippes fell silent at once. Shakespeare just had time to note that before the younger Cecil's gaze fell full on him. It was not a magisterial stare, such as Sir William had had.

But its blazing intensity made it at least as arresting. Robert Cecil said, "Tell me at once-at once! — how you know this to be true."

"How, sir? Because I have seen him and spoke with him," Shakespeare said. "He hath cropped his hair close to his head and shaved his beard, so that a man might pass him in the street and know him not; but his voice is not so easily disguised."

"But he went to sea at Deptford," Thomas Phelippes said.

"In sooth: as I told him," Shakespeare replied. "And, quotha, he came ashore at Margate, for that he might hie back to London."

"Damnation take him," Phelippes said. "He were better gone. For he will make himself known. He can no more help spewing words than a malmsey-nose sot can help spewing wine."

"Do the Spaniards seize him, he dies the death," Robert Cecil said, "the which he must know."

"He doth know it indeed," Shakespeare said. "But he cannot avoid what plays out here, no more than can a jackdaw spying some trifling shiny thing serving to bait a snare."

Grimly, Cecil said, "A jackdaw snares but itself: until it be snared, and tamed, and taught, it hath no knowledge of human speech. Would the same were so of Marlowe."

"An the dons lay hold of him, how shall he save himself?" Phelippes asked.

The question hung in the air. Phelippes didn't answer it. Neither did Robert Cecil. Silence did the job for them. One possibility immediately occurred to Shakespeare- by telling them all he knows. That had been in his mind ever since he'd had the misfortune to discover his fellow poet hadn't had the sense to get out of England while he could.

Cecil looked his way again. "Gramercy, Master Shakespeare, for bringing this word to my notice. Doubt not I shall attend to't."

"By the which you mean, do your confederates find him, he likewise dies the death," Shakespeare said.

Now Cecil's gaze was perfectly opaque. Shakespeare realized he'd blundered, and might have blundered badly. It wasn't that he was wrong. It was, in fact, that he was right. Such things might better have stayed unspoken. Then the younger Cecil wouldn't either have to admit to planning Marlowe's untimely death or to tell a lie by denying it.

"Would he'd gone abroad," Thomas Phelippes murmured: as much of an answer as Shakespeare was likely to get.

"I shall ask once more, have you other news we should hear?" Cecil, this time, sounded as if he meant the question, not as if he were asking it for form's sake alone.

But Shakespeare shook his head. When next I see Kit, I must tell him both sides'd fain know the color of's blood, he thought. He didn't know he'd see Marlowe again, but found it all too likely. Icarus flew nigh the sun, and perished thereby. Kit outdoth him in folly, first helping kindle the flame that now will burn him.

Phelippes pointed towards the door. "We are in Paternoster Row, by St. Paul's," he said. "Knowing so much, can you wend your way homeward?"

"I can, an I be not robbed or murthered faring thither," Shakespeare answered. Nicholas Skeres had told him London's miscreants were ordered to leave him alone. He'd seen some signs it might be so. But he still remained far from sure Skeres' word was to be trusted. And, on a night as dark as this, even an honest footpad might make an honest mistake and fall on him.

The night wasn't so dark when he left the house as it had been when he got there: the third-quarter moon, looking like half a glowing gold angel or mark, had climbed up over the rooftops to the northeast. In fact, it made a pretty fair guide for Shakespeare as he hurried back towards Jane Kendall's lodging-house.

He was out after curfew. Twice he had to duck into shadowed doorways as a Spanish patrol-always several men together, as single Spaniards weren't safe on the streets past sunset-marched by. Once, somebody else out late didn't disappear fast enough. A Spaniard called out. The Englishman ran instead of coming forward. Shouting and cursing, the dons pounded after him. One of them fired a pistol. No scream followed, so Shakespeare supposed the ball missed. He waited till the soldiers had rounded a corner, then went on his own way.

He got home with no more trouble. He even got a little writing done. Sleep? He might have got a little that night. He wasn't sure.